Reality of Life and Death and Eternal Life

It is reality of life here on earth that we will attend funerals while living here. Mike and I attended our first funeral last week. It was a coworker’s husband who passed away. We worked with her in the same office and wanted to go. We didn’t know him but it was a very sweet celebration of his life and his death and this began to make me think about the importance of eternal life. We then had our friends who are missionaries in Liberia, Africa; send us an e-mail to say they had to fly back because his dad had only a few days left to live. Lastly, Mike’s ex father in law, the kids’ grandfather, passed away on Friday. With all of the deaths this past week, it made me realize how important it is to be sure people we know and people we don’t know have the opportunity to know who Jesus is and that He died on the cross for our sins and that He is alive now and desires to have a relationship with all of us. Fortunately, every one of these people had a personal relationship with the Lord so they know that they may have suffered in this life time but now have eternal life with Jesus in Heaven. For a lot of people they don’t have that assurance. I have never been afraid of death even when I was not living my life to serve God. I should have feared Him but I didn’ I knew in my heart when I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior that I would spend eternal life with Him. What I didn’t really understand until I rededicated my life back to Him in 2000, is that He asks us to be obedient in all we do with our lives and wants us to be in His will not in rebellion. For those years that I rebelled, I made wrong choices and had to pay the consequences for them. God allowed the bad things to happen so that I would grow in my character and be who He created me to be and for His purposes. As death is so prevalent here with people dying of HIV/AIDS, it is so important to share the Word of God with people and let them know that they are forgiven for their past mistakes, that God is a loving God, but that they need to turn from their ways and allow Him to work in their lives. I know as we continue to build relationships with the people here that have HIV/AIDS that we will probably attend one or more of their funerals. We ask that you pray for the Holy Spirit to use us as His tools to deliver the message that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6) and that we are the vessels by which lives are changed.

Driving Lessons

Who is the best person for the job? Apparently, not me. (Pam) Last week, Danielle Schneider from Brentwood Baptist, asked me if I would teach her how to drive a stick shift. She is planning on being here for 1 year and realized she is going to have to get a car but will need to learn how to drive a stick and drive on the other side of the road. I told her sure we will look at doing it on Monday. Well Monday came and I took her over to an isolated dirt road and got out of the car and pulled up the emergency brake so the car wouldn’t roll on us. I said, “Danielle don’t let me forget the brake is on.”
She gets in the drivers side which is on the opposite side of the way we are used to getting in a car in America. We both started laughing and then she realizes that the mirrors were all backwards; the car was on the left side of the road, the floor had another pedal to deal with and she had to place her left hand on a gear shift and try to get the car going in a forward direction. We attempted many 1st gear starts and she got it going a couple of times but we didn’t get as far as we would have liked in our first lesson. We had a lot of laughs as many of you who know her could imagine. We then attempted reverse and I got a phone call right in the middle of all of this. I told her just keep trying while I take this call. I knew it would be hard because we were laughing so hard. While I was talking I looked down between the seats and realized the parking brake was still on. I was hysterically laughing at that point and told Danielle we might have gotten a lot further in our lesson if we had “taken the emergency brake off”. The little car was huffin and puffin and I couldn’t understand why! Now we know, I probably wasn’t the right person for the job but we had great fun and fellowship trying. I am going to persevere with her to the end but we are trying to trade cars and I don’t want the car to have to huff and puff too much. The car was making some weird noises and it could be like a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off. I will keep you posted............

Update at Soetwater, the refugee camp

The latest update from John is that the camp has gone on a hunger strike but not by choice. There was a lady that came on Saturday disguised as a UN person, but later found out she was from the Red Cross. This is what triggered some of them to take drastic means to try and get someone to listen to them. The Somalia’s have taken over the camp and want action to take place from either the UN or to be sent back home (repatriation-high cost to the govt.) or help to get back into their old communities. (This also is a high cost to the govt.) They don’t want either of the last two. They want to be sent to another country, such as America or Australia. The government doesn’t seem to want to have any involvement and so the people are trying to use desperate measures to get some attention. They have said no more volunteers aloud to come into the camps to provide food or help with medical attention. (This is a threat to outsiders) The women and children who don’t have a fight aren’t getting any food or medical attention and this is horrible for these folks. We have had special prayer times and heard news yesterday that there have been a lot of people coming to know the Lord because they have some pastors who have started worship and bible study and prayer groups within one of the tents set up out there. We know God allows bad things to happen in order to draw His people back to Him. Of the 3,100 hundred people out there 2,600 are Somalia’s, who are Muslim; the other 500 are from various countries. We pray that a revival would take place amongst all the refugees and lives could be changed. The newspaper yesterday, controlled by the government, reported yesterday that the UN had visited the camps and found people were trying to commit suicide by jumping into the very cold Atlantic waters. They said 4 people are missing but John said none of this has been confirmed yet. There was a picture of a man that had been pulled from the waters but don’t really know the whole story.
It is really difficult to understand what is right for everyone the refugees are here illegally and that is why the govt doesn’t want to spend Rands (Dollars) to incorporate them back into society. However, the moral issues and the Biblical Instruction in Isaiah 58: 6-10 tell us we must help the poor.
Mike and I have really been convicted about the issues concerning the illegal immigrants in the USA. It puts everything into perspective as we have witnessed first hand the oppression that they receive from other human beings. They are people too! I see now how our President, George Bush, has compassion for the people who have nothing to go back home to. They have no hope in life and struggle with sending them back to shacks and poor govt. and tough times in Central America. We don’t have a solution either but we can serve where we can and pray that God will’s is done all over the world.

Busyness

As I write this e-mail, I am reminded how Satan uses busyness to distract us from our fellowship with the Lord. Mike and I prayed early on that we wanted to be used for the Kingdom and asked God to help us to “get involved with community”. Well once again be careful what you ask for you might just get it. We have 12 individual volunteers, our Brentwood Leadership Team, and our Missions Minister, Scott Harris, all here at the same time. We also have Living Way really starting to take off in many different aspects and we are burning the candle at both ends. It has been wonderful to have our extended family from church here and a blessing to have Scott running around with us (running us around HA!) to really see all that we have going on at Living Hope, Way and Grace. We also had the ground breaking ceremony for the new chapel and Prevention building last Friday. That was a great time some of the children from Capricorn did a choreographed dance to some Christian music and the children from Masi sang a couple of local Christian songs. We both had a tear in our eye when the kids did this. We know this is what it is all about changing these kids lives and giving them hope and a future with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It was also a testimony to so many of the people that were here when Living Hope started (locals) and allowed them to see how it has grown and birthed new ministries from it.
We are very fortunate to have Mike’s nephew Aaron, who married us, down here with the team. He came over Sunday and spent the night with us and we hope he will come again before they leave. We also had a meeting today with all of the entrepreneurs from our class that we taught about 6 weeks ago and it was great. We had not had all of them together in our weekly meetings since the class. They had not gotten their business plan together as quickly as we would have liked, but hey this is Africa! They have at least gotten a Bible verse and devotion each week that goes along with the mentoring program.
Pray for us to get some balance back in our personal life.
Update on the refugee camp. All is peaceful right now. There are now about 2600 Somalia’s and 500 other foreigners from Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Congo, Mozambique, etc.
They still have no idea what they are going to do with everyone but as long as the media stays out they don’t try to put on a show. John has been able to step out of his role as the person in charge of everything but he still is very much involved on a daily basis. We have 9 of our volunteers going out every morning this week working with the children. They are singing songs, doing crafts and playing games. It is quite the opportunity for them to see such a tough lifestyle. Most of them are college students from the states and not used to seeing people in these situations. Continue to pray for these people that a solution would come soon for them.